OMG!

I can throw a couple eggs in a freezer in case I want kids later with my DNA. Aaaah! What the hell, that would creep me out, like something out of a Ridley Scott film. Sarain eggs. Oh man, I dunno. And apparently they can grow penises in petri dishes now! At least they’re not growing penises on the backs of mice or something. I don’t think I could handle that. That would be too weird!

I’m stoned almost all the time while these drugs finish getting out of my system, as per the psych nurse instructions. It’s pretty nice, it makes things very silly and not so scary. Boys are silly! Really.

Dinner conversation

My family is reacting weirdly, some better than most. My mom doesn’t want to talk about it but she suddenly started cleaning, and cooking, and that was scary! My grandparents are over tonight and they talked non stop about the various things we were eating. They look really tired. My cousin sent me an email saying she had a dream I was a boy and she was all “OMG!” Because that’s the statement of the century. OMG!

No, she’s cool about it. I dunno, it’s funny. I think it makes sense to people, even if they find it unusual or whatever. I mean, I’ve always been a boy to them really. In my weird way.

Learning to date is weird though, that is so weird! Probably because of the unspoken gender thing, I mean, I’m sure I did confuse a lot of people as to why someone so guy like would not have come out already. And obviously I knew something was up. But mostly I didn’t want to be a guy without honestly understanding the problems inherent between men and women, and everyone else on the spectrum. I thought it would be a better idea to hold off until I could try and occupy every gender on the spectrum before deciding. And it was weird, because some of those genders would turn out to be just archetypes and not really correspond to an actual identity. I mean, the underlying tension of gender identity can be lost sometimes, because it is always this tense negotiation between your gender and the larger world.

Moon

I was like, eleven when i got my period. That was weird. I had to figure out how to survive my adolescence and I read the required girl books, including the classic “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.” Which is about getting your first period. And it’s really dated now, I mean, her sanitary napkin was like some kind of paratrooper harness, so extreme! So I had to make a big fuss over my period.

I thought conceptually it was interesting, but aside from that it was just a pain in the ass. Suddenly I had to carry sanitary napkins and be discrete, and that is just beyond this boy’s capability. I also was made to care for a bag of flour for a week in case I got accidentally knocked up. I mean, everyone did. But what the hell, it was a bag of flour! That doesn’t teach responsibility, that just makes everyone feel dumb. How would you like to carry a bag of flour on the bus with you for a week. But it made me paranoid of having children, because now children weren’t much more complex than bags of flour, except noisier. And who wants to raise some powdered grain? No one!

Anyway, that theory about if boys had periods their bedrooms would look like crime scenes? True. All true. Tragic to be so obvious.

I used to write all my protagonists in the male position, I mean, up until I was twelve and decided to write about girls for a while. And it was weird, because I always thought of my characters as men, but I had to switch them and see if there was any truth to that. And there was, which made me happy. But that’s still not as complex as it really is.

When you are trans, sometimes it seems there are always two worlds going on, one that respects you and another that hates you. And finding your way through those two worlds is scary as shit! I could have come out ages ago, but I didn’t want to see history repeat itself and I didn’t want to live through the last Weimar Era. So I tried to hang on to it as best as I can and figure out how to be myself and live up to some code of ethics. But I lost them on the way. I think they’re back now.

Stupid Boy Tricks

Being politically aware in high school still didn’t stop me from achieving new and greater heights of male stupidity. I think my favorite by far was the time I spent jumping on a trampoline with Heather and Erin in the middle of a thunderstorm. Outside, of course. I don’t think we clued in to the dangers until a huge bolt of lightning snaked down and cracked right as Heather was suspended in mid air. I remember we all asked “Are you okay? Did you get hit?” And she really didn’t know, I mean, she could have been hit, her hair went all funny for a second. She’s a 911 dispatcher now. She used to drive us around and around on the speedway in her second hand car. Anyway, after jumping up and down on a trampoline in the middle of a thunderstorm, we ran across the neighborhood to my crushes house, and I remember she gave me this weird look like “Why do you do stupid shit? What the hell?” But I was also in a wet t-shirt, so that “You nitwit” look didn’t last long.

I was a clumsy boy though. So clumsy. My body didn’t make any sense. I showed my cousins how I could bend my arms once and they were like “OMG! You’re a freak!” I had to stop hitting myself in the chest for fun and that sucked. And then all my tomboy girl friends suddenly started trying to be girly and figuring out how that worked, and that was really funny because they usually ended up thinking the whole world sucked. I remember I had one friend who just had this run on commentary on how people sucked and I was just like, yes, that has some factual truths to it. And then my masculinity model was James Dean of course, so it got more bizarre because suddenly I was a rebel and a girl. And I remember part of trying to understand femmes lead me to rent every Marilyn Monroe movie. And I thought, this sucks, all she does is stand around smoking! Is that what girls do? Of course Marilyn in real life had her own deep issues.

And then my cousin had a porn stash that the family tried to burn, but there was a prohibition on burning in the city so they had to put it out. And when I raked the leaves, which was always my job, I started raking up all kinds of hardcore porn. I was like, what the hell? Why do I get the weird jobs all the time?

When my model airplane paint spilled under my bed and got me high in the middle of the night, yeah, that was probably another really good stupid boy trick. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to clean up oil based paint while high, but it’s not much fun. I only ever finished one model, the Titanic. And that seemed good enough for me. Such a pain in the ass. I tried to make Kit, the car from Night Rider, but someone vacuumed up part of the internal combustion engine and I was so picky that I never bothered to finish.

Pronouns Disclaimer

I know some people have adjusted their pronouns recently, so I apologize if I haven’t kept up to date, but half my brain was shut down, so really, it’s weird. And from where I’m standing right now the actual names for genders don’t matter, but I know people like to pick where they are. So pardon me for any He/She/Ze slips.

Girls Girls Girls

I don’t know when I decided I was going to learn to be the perfect boyfriend, but it was way before puberty hit. I decided to start asking girls about their feelings and their hopes and dreams and all kinds of things because I honestly didn’t know what it meant to be a girl. I was so curious. And then puberty hit and instead of just being friendly, girls started falling for me. And that was so weird, because suddenly I wasn’t just another girl anymore. And I didn’t know how to relate to boys so I was stuck with all these girls asking about their feelings and running away from googly eyes.

The googly eyes freaked me out when I first saw them, they looked crazy! What the hell, why are you looking at me like that? Are you going to beat me up? And as time went on I started realizing I was a lady killer. And that sucked even worse because now all kinds of girls were getting super pissed at me and calling me a tease and feeling played, and I didn’t even know where they were coming from. No one taught me the dangers of becoming a lady killer. And I felt like all anyone wanted was sex, because they never said anything romantic before getting all crazy, that was shocking. And I wanted a relationship, and suddenly there were all these girls demanding sex that neither of us understood completely. Because I didn’t have a dick. And that was fucking bizarre, for anyone chasing me. Because I was trying really hard not to be a guy, and that was a mind fuck because then these girls had to deal with liking a female bodied person. So weird!

And it just continued on, almost all my best friends have had some unrequited thing go on with me, and I don’t know what to do about that. But it’s like, as soon as people get to know me they seem to fall in love. So I go really mean to get them to go away, because that kind of feeling baffles me. And I feel horrible for not wanting to go any further than whatever.

I hate being a lady killer, but being an asshole is worse. I don’t know. Maybe there needs to be way more perfect boyfriends in the world, ones who actually ask about someone’s feelings. Really, that’s how you get ladies, you ask them questions and listen. It almost never fails! Everyone likes to be able to talk about themselves, because so few people are allowed to.

Mary!

A friend of mine started her awakening in like, an extreme amount of time. She called me one day and said “My vulva looks like the Virgin Mary. Nobody else’s does.” And I was like, “Actually, they all look like that.” “No, this is weird, nobody has a vulva like mine! Now I have to disclose something else up front.” And I was like “I’ve been looking at vulvas for ages, honestly, the are all built on the same principle, with variations. Yes, it looks like the Virgin Mary. Haven’t you ever wondered why I like the Virgin of Guadalupe so much?” “I could do like, a puppet show with it!” “Yeah, that would be funny.” It’s true, and male genitals are pretty similar to the principle that female genitals are based on, although you might not know that.

Plastic Puppet Motive

When i came out and went to my first youth group meeting, some schism had just happened and the two people left were a butchy dyke and a gay man. And GLHS was deader than a doornail that night, so they took me out for coffee.

And Mike, the gay guy, was so much fun. He keep calling the butch dyke Mary. In fact, EVERYBODY was Mary. The waiter was Mary. His parents were Mary. I was Mary.

He was running a small club in the Rumley Building with his partner. It was called PPM and it was a rave club in the old school of PLUR philosophy. If you don’t know old school raves, PLUR was a code of conduct and it stood for Peace love Unity Respect. And it was a fun club, because everyone could go there. I think straight people had issues with that because it was a fully inclusive space and two boys or two girls could be making out anywhere. Two girls weren’t an issue, but two hot gay men macking on each other instead of beating this shit out of each other, that was incomprehensible.

It was like an ode to the binary code. One wall was painted to look like a wall of fire and the other one like a wall of water. They had half of it as a chill out space, and played trip videos and stuff like Barbarella. And Mike, AKA DJ Deko-ze, knew how to spin. He took people on a journey, he brought you up, he took you down, he made you hate, he made you love, he made every cynic feel SOMETHING.

They did weird s/m-y performance art every few hours and the bathrooms were covered in porn, naked boys in the girls room and naked girls in the boys room, but eventually it didn’t matter. Opposite the bathrooms was a wall painted with sperm in day glo pain, and one sperm was HIV +, it really kept you aware.

The bouncer, or one of them, was an imperious bisexual named Candie who didn’t take any shit from anyone. We used to flirt a lot. Actually, a bunch of girls there started wanting to leave their boyfriends for me, and I had no idea why. I was the hot topic on the local BBS and men kept coming up to me being like “Fine, you can have my girlfriend, she only ever talks about you anyway.” And I would be so confused. “I don’t know what to do with your girlfriend!” Because I didn’t, I was still trying to understand women, and I couldn’t. Or didn’t realize it wasn’t any different from me. And I was also learning about masculinity through the gay men I was hanging out with, because they were getting crushed out on me and being cuddly and that was totally new for me. I couldn’t be cuddly with girls, I didn’t know how. I knew how to punch them and run away and that was it. No, but you understand that male idiocy of relating to girls. I never wanted to see my friends when they were drunk though, only on drugs. And only certain drugs.

Everyone at that club knew I was underage, so I still obeyed the law as well as I could, because it was an honour to be allowed in, not every underage person got that treatment, they so turned people away who weren’t ready for it. I drank there one New Years, but aside from that no substances at all. I was totally aware. And I picked up a contact high which was good enough for me. I remember I used to fret about the age thing and my friends would tell me “They know you’re a little Thirza.”

And they did. They even knew when raids were going to happen so they could start telling all the people under age to leave. And they would, someone would come up to me and say “Cops are coming, get out.” So we’d leave until it was safe again. And that’s such an old school gay bar thing.

PPM ended up shutting down because they couldn’t figure out how to make money on the concept. I mean, people didn’t buy liquor. That wasn’t the particular mind altering substance they wanted. So it shut down, became a boxing club. And I think rave culture is still trying to get back to PLUR, but it’s hard because it means diversity and that threatens people.

I was talking with a female friend of mine about nuns once and I was like “Why are they always Sister Mary something? Why can’t they just be like Sister betty?”

And she said “Surely a Buddhist Jew doesn’t need to tell you about the Mother of our Lord!”

And she didn’t, because Mike already talked all about Mary.

Hair

I came out to my friend Laurel and her mum Lorraine, who have known me since I was two. They were kind of shocked, and resistant, but we actually had a good conversation about it, especially after I assured them I wasn’t going to become a bad man. And I hope I don’t. I don’t think I will. Anyway, Laurel was asking me all the questions about what female to male transition looks like. She wanted to know about the surgeries but they squeam me out so we didn’t talk about that, and besides, I still don’t know about surgery. So we talked about what testosterone does. They were really worried about side effects, which was interesting because no one questioned the side effects of my anticonvulsants. So I told them honestly what I knew about testosterone and how it works on your body, and that some of the suspension liquid it is in gives people allergies. In it’s most basic it’s steroids really. I told them it would be like I was going through menopause, and that freaked them out because of course everyone knows how intense menopause is. But I feel like I already did menopause.

Oh yeah, so we started talking about body hair, and Laurel asked me if I was very hairy now and of course I’m not, I’m really bare. And so I told her that and she said maybe I’d be like every other Indian man and have like, three chest hairs.

And it’s true, Native masculinity is SO different from other masculinities. I mean, they have girl skin. And very little hair. And they often have a sort of androgynous side. I think it makes transitioning hard because you never reach the gruff rough furry end of masculinity that we assume is the epitome. And I think even bio Native men have a hard time with their masculinity, because it DOES look so different. So probably the feminine parts of me I like will hang around.

Lorraine and Laurel were cool in the end. I think they felt better when I said they could still tease me, but eventually I was going to be totally indistinguishable from any other guy.

Laurel is having some intense dreams, woah, I can’t believe how terrified of men women are. I mean, I can believe it, which is the sad thing.

Britney Spears: A Case Study

Sorry Britney, one more analyst.

My cousin Cheli Nighttraveller was working at Claires when Britney had a show in Saskatoon. She was the one who pierced her ears. And apparently a whole wave of girls was following her, she had no privacy. Anyway, it looked like she had a really hard time with her piercing but because people were all watching she put on this smile. And I remember Cheli told us, “She’s going to crack one of these days.”

And then of course she’s been in all the papers.

There was this interesting thing when she shaved her head, people got really upset about that, because it was this total symbol of ultimate womanhood, to have long hair, and she just basically went fuck it and shaved it all off. And I remember that impulse too, because when I was halfway through my transformation I shaved my head. And I was a girl so it was decided that I was mutilating myself. Which I so wasn’t, I just needed to liberate myself with a symbolic death. And so shaving my head was it.

Now if I had been a bio boy and shaved my head like that, people might think I was becoming a skinhead. Which wasn’t it at all either.

What I was doing was taking my gender back to zero so I could learn who I was. And that’s a common thing, Buddhist monks and nuns all have shaved heads, because it’s a moment of being free of gender. It’s neutral. It doesn’t mean you have to stay neutral, it’s just a necessary spot to be in for a moment, to truly think about life in the middle.

And I think she is learning what it means to be a woman. I mean, she did the virgin thing for so long, that’s what she built her career on. And then she discovered sex. And I’m sure she was having fun but suddenly all these people started calling her a slut, because to be powerful, female, and sexual is a scary thing in this world.

I finally figured out what was so amazing about that girl in high school. She didn’t fit a single archetype. And it was so bizarre, because she was SUCH a girl, so girly, oh my god. And yet she wasn’t anything I had ever know about women, she contradicted everything I had understood to mean female. That fucked me over, I was like, woah, I don’t know who you are at all. That is so cool! And she was high femme, and nothing like anything I had been told femme was. And so I think I went out to try and understand femmes, because they baffled me. And I think I baffled her too because I remember one day in the library I asked if she thought I was butch or femme and she said “I don’t know.” And I was like, well fuck, I must be SOMETHING. What the hell am I? And I already knew I was a boy, but I wasn’t sure because I didn’t fit with boy.

Anyway, I think Britney is trying to reconcile being a gifted sexual woman in the society we have today. I think she’s been buried under a concept of good female behaviour that she doesn’t even know if she’s okay anymore. And that’s something I see a lot of femmes go through, and it’s the same thing I go through.